Why the state was dropped in the first place: A prequel to Skocpol's “bringing the state back in”

Abstract

Around the time of World War II, just as the American state was acquiring new levels of capacity for autonomous action, the state was dropped from American social science, as part of the reaction to the rise of totalitarianism. All traces of state autonomy, now understood as “state coercion,” were expunged from the image of American democracy. In this ideological climate, the “society‐centered” frameworks of pluralism and structural‐functionalism that Skocpol criticizes swept the field. Skocpol's call for a return to a Weberian understanding of the (potential) autonomy of government administrators may be complemented by a Weberian understanding of the (potential) autonomy of democratic leaders.